You may have noticed there are tons of items in the AH listed for Very Long with a buy-now of auto-sell price. Thousands of them. This is my doing. Sure, alot of it is junk, but there are a few really good things thrown in there. So enjoy. It'd be nice if this could become a regular thing, since it's the equivalent of having a mall. A temporary mall. With limited selection and quantity, but still!

As an update, there are only 7 items left. And the two that I screwed up on, the anarchery set and lottery ticket with no buy-now. The lottery ticket amazingly was bid on up to 100 chips. If anyone's interested, the remaining items are a skateboard, 2 green gumballs, a football helmet, a can of gingerelle, and 2 blue gumballs. The other 1594 items all sold within the first 2 days of this sale, ranging from very very good items to complete junk. Total profit from those items: 117,418 chips. Every single one of those items was sold at auto-sell price as buy-now. This tells me that there's a demand for /every/ item I sold, several hundred unique items. That leaves the only reason not to list these items instead of auto-selling, as the inconvenience of having to list them all separately. So, just as a measure, who here would list items instead of auto-selling if there was a list multiple box- put in a number, it duplicates that auction x times (and fails completely if you don't have enough items/chips for that many listings). This would make it just as easy to list it in auction as it is to auto-sell. And hopefully stimulate the market. Another thing I'd press for is listings with only a buy-now and no time limit. While not exactly a mall, it'd atleast make it possible to build up stocks of uncommon items without having to repost them if no one bought them during that span.

I realize this was for something of a test rather than just advertising, but I do feel I need to mention that generally advertising for in-game goods isn't allowed in the forums, and I don't want anyone else getting the idea they should start posting that stuff here.

I've been hearing about a certain amount of auction house disgruntlement recently, about which this test seems to be an attempt at thinking up some fixes to it. I guess I'd rather have some discussion about the root issues before diving into specific targeted experiments and potential fixes. I don't think I really know yet what people dislike the most, or have the most trouble with, and that's where I'd prefer to start.

Sorry, didn't think about the advertising thing. As for root issues, the one think I dislike the most is that when I'm looking for something, it's almost never there. And if it is, it's as an auction with no buy-now, or the buy-now is really high. So when we want something, it takes forever to get it. Even if you go to the trade channel, there aren't that many people on at a time, and often don't have or aren't selling what you're looking for. That's not always the case if you're looking for something that's mildly popular, but even then more often than not you won't find anyone selling it. So lack of instant availability of almost all items seems to be a root issue to me, for buyers.